An Editorial Provokes A Debate on Intermarriage; Jewish Weekly Touches a Nerve in Connecticut

By JONATHAN RABINOVITZ

Published: July 13, 1995

WEST HARTFORD, Conn., July 12—
For nine years, Cheryl Krause has struggled to feel comfortable in the Jewish world of her husband and to provide a Jewish home for their two children.

Mrs. Krause, a Presbyterian, has studied the Torah with a rabbi, played the role of a matzoh in a Passover play and prepared seders for her in-laws. ("Much tougher than Christmas dinner," she said.) It is a point of pride that her 4-year-old son, Seth, built a sand castle on the beach the other day and began to re-enact the Jews' escape from slavery in ancient Egypt, chanting, "Let my people go."

So when Mrs. Krause stood up at a forum on the refusal by the largest Jewish newspaper in the state to print interfaith wedding announcements, she could hardly hold back her tears. "I finally felt welcome," she told the editor, Jonathan S. Tobin. "Now a wall has come up and I'm no longer accepted."

It was another emotional moment in a bitter controversy that erupted after Mr. Tobin wrote a blunt editorial, "Is an intermarriage a Jewish simcha?" in February in his weekly newspaper, The Jewish Ledger. Simcha is the Hebrew word for "joyous celebration," and Mr. Tobin argued that a wedding between a Jew and a non-Jew was not an event for the Jewish community to celebrate.

Since then, the paper, which has a circulation of about 30,000 and editions in four Connecticut cities, has received dozens of letters including, Mr. Tobin said, more nasty ones than he has ever seen. (One wished for his skin to fall off from leprosy.) Some rabbis, whose congregations include interfaith couples, have privately called to offer praise. And the incident became a topic of heated discussion in synagogues across Connecticut.

In restating the newspaper's policy to bar interfaith announcements from its social pages, Mr. Tobin touched off a debate that has occurred at Jewish institutions nationwide. With surveys showing that American Jews today are as likely to marry gentiles as members of their own faith, there is widespread concern among Jewish leaders over how to keep Judaism alive.

Many favor condemning such interfaith marriages. Yet in recent years, a growing movement has emerged that counsels reaching out to these couples and encouraging them to strengthen their ties to Judaism.

Many worry that interfaith unions will lead to a steady decline in the Jewish population in the United States, causing Jewish institutions to close and the faith to become less vibrant. They condemn such marriages, and indeed, most rabbis refuse to perform them.

Yet in recent years, there has been a growing movement to extend a hand to these couples, encouraging them to strengthen their ties to Judaism, and almost every Jewish Federation in the nation now has an outreach committee.

This conflict over whether to include or exclude interfaith couples extends to all aspects of Jewish life, from disputes over selling plots in Jewish cemeteries to non-Jewish spouses to mohels who will not perform the ritual circumcision for the newborn sons of these marriages.

But the discord in Connecticut has been an unusual public airing of such an issue.

"Jewish institutions have to fund-raise and can't deal with the controversy." Mr. Tobin remarked. "My job as editor is to talk about things people are not willing to talk about."

In his three-year tenure at The Ledger, an independently owned newspaper, Mr. Tobin, a Long Island native, has turned the once-stodgy weekly into a plucky newspaper with stories on abuses at a local Jewish nursing home and domestic violence among Jews. At a recent dinner, when asked how he was adjusting to the Hartford Jewish community, he replied that it was "a far greater adjustment for the community to get used to me."

A Conservative Jew who is married to a Jew, Mr. Tobin, 39, personally opposes intermarriage, but he said he was motivated to write the editorial by broader intellectual and professional reasons. And he said he had not expected such a response.

Indeed, what prompted him to address the issue was a wedding announcement accompanied by a picture of a couple posed in front of a Christmas tree.

"I couldn't believe my eyes," Mr. Tobin said.

In the editorial, Mr. Tobin wrote, "I can't see into that young couple's hearts, but with such a picture, am I really supposed to think that they want to be part of an unbroken chain of Jewish life that will stretch to the future?"

While encouraging the newlyweds to have a Jewish home and promising to cheer them on if they did, Mr. Tobin was not optimistic about this couple or Jewish members of other intermarried couples remaining faithful to Judaism.

"The future of American Jewry is a proposition that we are voting on with our own behavior," he wrote. "My feeling is that if you are voting no, even if you wish the rest of us well, then I am under no obligation to treat your simcha as one the community should celebrate."

The policy does not apply to those who have converted.

The editorial won praise from many, particularly Conservative and Orthodox Jews. Rabbi Jerome M. Epstein, chief executive of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the national association of conservative congregations, wrote to Mr. Tobin, "I applaud you!"

"The Jewish community must be concerned about its survival and its ability to thrive," Rabbi Epstein wrote.